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Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

arstechnica.com

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Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#161

Post by xen2xen1 »

ragnese wrote: post #154
supertrope wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is universities tend to be in cities with a few satellite branches in rural towns. Spread the “production” across as many Congressional Districts as possible to optimize for votes. When the system incentivizes pandering to rural areas that is the only winning move.

Is this different than how military spending is spread, though? That's not a rhetorical question- I'm not tuned in enough to know. Even though I've seen military bases in the middle of nowhere, I've certainly seen some bases and defense contractors (Raytheon, Lockheed, etc) in non-rural areas. I'm cynically, and pessimistically, kind of assuming that it's really just about what's being funded in this case. Military s…

I've done IT a long time, and I once was sent to a gleaming new building.. In an Indiana corn field. In the middle of nowhere, for Indiana. They made very small number of parts (or mostly one) for the military. It was probably an F35 part. An entire bespoke business for a part...

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#162

Post by RALaBarge »

notfish wrote: post #34
naysunjr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA going back to the moon and Musk to Mars is nothing but pipe dreams to sell the story mode types. The US government has pivoted to animal husbandry of the populace through techno police state, and handing sycophants to power their own title, land and serfs

My ex coworkers at spacex are pretty damn motivated to get to mars, many of them despite all the Musking happening. I wouldn’t bet against them.

I wouldnt bet against them either, but the material science aspect of it all just isnt there and wont be for a while. How many tons would we need to get into Earth orbit alone, let alone transfer to mars?

I never hear anyone speak of the radiation outside of our atmosphere very often when it comes to 'moonshot' ideas like this, and how we would be incapable of preventing it or surviving it once we arrive, in our current biological form.

How much would it cost to get all the lead or H20 you would need to generate a barrier against it into orbit? Do we need to have a moon base extracting materials for us to even think about transferring orbits?

Its all pie in the sky, and that is great because the sky is a pie that we should long to eat, but lets not fool ourselves that in ours or our childrens childrens lifetimes we will have a human on a planet that is not Earth.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#163

Post by javiramos »

francisofascii wrote: post #147
jplusequalt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's friends with multiple grad students who are funded by the NSF ... this is not the opinion I've heard from them. They're all working on awesome research that could actually help people, and yet they struggle to get by.

What is a typical annual stipend? $37K? Sounds barely livable depending on the location, roommate situation, your stage in life, etc.

~$50k at MIT. Barely livable but livable. You can also complement this stipend with internships and other opportunities.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#164

Post by lumost »

mousethatroared wrote: post #116
lumost wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US can easily afford its obligations. The problem is that the tax base has shifted into alternative forms of income such as dividends and cap gains which are taxed at lower rates. It’s a policy choice that these returns are not taxed at comparable rates to income. The trend of nation-wide capital returns vs income is telling.

I disagree. Instead of looking at where the tax revenues can come from, which I don't necessarily disagree consider what proportion of the nations economic activity is government spending. I consider govt spending/GDP a much better indicator of economic health. In fact, tertiary_sector/GDP is better still. The US government has too much presence in the economy and can't even provide health care and free tuition.

The issue here is that no one can agree on which portion of government spending is wasteful. It’s almost taken as a tautology that the government is wasteful. After 50 years of cost cutting and wage freezes, I tend to find it fanciful that individuals paid 1/4 of their private sector compensation to work on core civil infrastructure, national research priorities, and policy are somehow a bad deal for the American taxpayer at large. If anything, I’d imagine that the government could incentivize greater productivity by normalizing the pay scales. At a minimum, maintaining a public capability can often neutralize monopolistic pricing practices.

Have you considered who the narrative of wasteful spending benefits? Even our narratives of tax increases never discuss tax increases on what is now the bulk of personal monetary gain.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#165

Post by lmwnshn »

francisofascii wrote: post #147
jplusequalt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's friends with multiple grad students who are funded by the NSF ... this is not the opinion I've heard from them. They're all working on awesome research that could actually help people, and yet they struggle to get by.

What is a typical annual stipend? $37K? Sounds barely livable depending on the location, roommate situation, your stage in life, etc.

https://csstipendrankings.org/

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#166

Post by kelipso »

francisofascii wrote: post #147
jplusequalt wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's friends with multiple grad students who are funded by the NSF ... this is not the opinion I've heard from them. They're all working on awesome research that could actually help people, and yet they struggle to get by.

What is a typical annual stipend? $37K? Sounds barely livable depending on the location, roommate situation, your stage in life, etc.

The usual stipend is much lower for grad students.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#167

Post by aredox »

inglor_cz wrote: post #71
7e wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tragedy avoided given his close ties to SpaceX and Musk, which would have been inappropriate at best and corruption at worst.

The space industry is still pretty small, insiders naturally know one another and have professional contacts.

RFK jr. is destroying all US public health institutions for less "insiderism" than that.

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#168

Post by datadrivenangel »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #153
somenameforme wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except SLS/Orion should be cancelled. The SLS is pejoratively called the Senate Launch System, because it has no real place in the market yet is continuing to consume tens of billions of dollars. It was mostly obsoleted by Falcon Heavy years ago (SLS has been a black hole of funding since 2011), and its costs are completely ridiculous. You're looking at billions of dollars per launch if it ever is confidently flight…

Just to add to this, somehow the current plan for getting to the moon involves over 15 launches (or 25, the number does seem to vary). With Starship actually having a larger payload than the Saturn V at least to LEO, how 15 launches could possibly be required, and such a plan been approved to spend billions of dollars on, I just don't know. So as much as I like the idea of NASA, something needs to be done there.

They got it down to 15 launches? Excellent news.

The starship refueling in LEO requiring multiple fuel starships is not advantages from a mass perspective...

Re: Congress moves to reject bulk of White House's proposed NASA cuts

#170

Post by Tadpole9181 »

notfish wrote: post #34
naysunjr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NASA going back to the moon and Musk to Mars is nothing but pipe dreams to sell the story mode types. The US government has pivoted to animal husbandry of the populace through techno police state, and handing sycophants to power their own title, land and serfs

My ex coworkers at spacex are pretty damn motivated to get to mars, many of them despite all the Musking happening. I wouldn’t bet against them.

They can be as excited as they want, but we are decades away from that even being a sliver of a chance of happening. None of the science or groundwork is there to actually make that happen.

Any manned trip to Mars is a guaranteed suicide mission, if they even get there at all.

And that's without even discussing the politics of a system like that. We can't even agree children should have food in this country. Our population is getting poorer, less healthcare, losing hope and gaining debt. And somehow we're ready to create a colony that is entirely dependent on us that can never be abandoned that requires resupplies so expensive that they could feed every child in America multiple times over for no known benefit?

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